Yesterday evening, I read a few MSM round-up pieces on Trump’s G-20 trip, like this take from NBC. For the thousandth time since 1/20/17, perusing the network hot takes made me wonder who’s taking crazy pills — the U.S. journalists who are watching the bizarre Trump shit-show and presenting recaps as if covering a more or less normal presidency, or me.

I don’t expect to like any Republican president’s policies. And Trump is a person of exceedingly low character, so I expect him to behave in an embarrassing manner. But sometimes I wonder if my antipathy toward the man distorts my view of his performance. Is it possible that, while he routinely fucks up and brings shame upon the country, Trump’s presidency isn’t the unmitigated disaster I think it is?

Then I watch something like this summary from an Australian analyst, and I think, nah, it’s not just me:

A compromised, incompetent, deranged buffoon is the president of the United States. The president is surrounded and enabled by amoral, unpatriotic, power-hungry people who will paper over his gaping deficiencies and corruption to pursue their own agendas. That’s bad, obviously. But the normalization of the situation poses its own dangers.

To pick on NBC for a moment, how could a “top-5 takeaways” piece fail to mention Trump’s insane assertion that “everyone” at the G-20 was talking about John Podesta, which also indicated Trump has no idea what role Podesta played in 2016 or, more alarmingly, the CIA’s role in investigating crimes against U.S. citizens? How could a round-up piece not include the weird and unprecedented insertion of Trump’s knockoff bag and shoe peddler spawn into the conference? Or his capitulation to Putin on an attack on U.S. sovereignty?

My complaint isn’t just about the sorry state of Beltway coverage. We’ve been kvetching about routine hackery for decades and will for decades to come, I suspect. But living in a country run by a madman and his accomplices warps reality for everyone, including the people whose job is to provide facts that help shape our perceptions. It’s probably easier for news sources outside the U.S. to frame the Trump menace accurately. But this interminable national crisis will require all of us to keep a grip on what’s real and what’s an illusion.

Anyhoo, on that happy note, open thread!

UPDATE:

FSM help us, Trump is tweeting again this morning. The capitulation to Putin is now complete — apparently, Trump “strongly pressing” Putin and giving his opinion is sufficient punishment for violating our national sovereignty:

A prediction: “working constructively with Russia” will amount to lifting sanctions. Also, Trump views Putin as a credible partner in cyber security rather than a grave threat to democracy, still doesn’t understand how the CIA works and everything is still Obama’s fault:

Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded..

I was offline most of last night. This morning, I hear Russia and the U.S. are brokering a cease-fire in Syria and the U.S. is sending a negotiator to the Ukraine. I can already see Putin’s machinations: Do these two things Trump asks. Trump then removes the sanctions. Russia moves back into the Ukraine and steps up civilian bombings in Syria. Right back where Russia thinks things should have been all along. Easy peasy for Vlad!

I dunno but sometimes these stupid weirdnesses of Trumps distracts from the policy implications that are actually important. That’s part of how he got elected. I think maybe journalists need to learn to report these things quickly in one sentence then get on with serious discussions.

Great post Betty but for me the biggest problem was 45’s daughter Ivanka being around. Is she running for president in 2020? Nepotism at it’s worst as she has no standing in this country yet seems to be the only person our president listens to.

Uhlmann has been the national political editor of ABC news since 2015, and won a Walkley award, Australia’s highest journalism honour, for broadcast interviewing in 2008.

While he may not be globally recognised, he caused controversy in Australia in 2016 when he blamed the South Australian state blackout on wind power and renewable energy, even though scientists disputed the claim. Uhlmann refused to apologise despite attracting complaints, and likened himself to a heretic being burned at the stake. In February that year he also published an essay that said the “intellectual virus” of Marxism was destroying the culture of western society.

Uhlmann describes himself as a centrist and once ran for public office in the Australian Capital Territory’s state election on a ticket with the conservative Christian independent Paul Osborne.

As comforting as it is to think these guys will be thwarted by their own ignorance and incompetence, and that most Americans don’t share their racist views (eg the Fourteen Words crap), and as much as I know we’re not supposed to make comparisons to Germany in the 30s, I can’t help but think that those guys in Germany were similarly incompetent at first (remember Hitler’s undistinguished military career).

So the question that stuck me yesterday was, “how did the Nazis *get* competent?” And it seems it was bc they able to get competent people in their government, bc there were surely some people there who didn’t really buy into the Dolchstosslegende/ Mein Kampf bs, but were competent and just really really loved power, no matter who held it. And when the bad guys finally repeated the Big Lie enough, and got enough power, the competent people saw which way the wind was blowing, shrugged, and flipped.

It’s not just you, Betty C, it’s the global consensus. The world as a whole (that is, Putin and other not-so-good actors aside) is disappointed and frustrated by the Trump administration’s failure/refusal to lead.

@Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.: Nazi comparisons are apt. Its up to us now. No one is going to come and save us. We have to stop them now, make any association with them poison. Success is not guaranteed but let it not be for the lack of trying on our part.

ETA: T’s regime is finding it difficult to fill all the positions, so what you are afraid of is not happening yet.

Hi Betty, You nailed it. My biggest problem with this whole Trump situation, is the alarming speed with which a great nation (I am not American, btw) completely capitulated FOR NO REASON. The part that gets me is that there was no reason for this situation to develop at this point – there are no great international crisis; there are no devastating terror attacks in the US; the economy is improving.
YET, half of the voting public willingly voted for a man and now are prostrating before Russia, without Russia really not doing too much.
Talk about return on investment on this one.
One of the greatest democracies in the world willingly got itself into a client state situation, without much going on, except the hatred of one half of the population for the other half. It does not inspire much confidence in democracy itself, does it?

To keep focus on what is important. I have turned off TV news completely including News Hour and BBC. I read the Twitter feeds of a few journalists and Washington Post, I also stay away from opinion columns for the most part.
I am also thinking of greatly reducing time spent on Balloon Juice. I find the negativity and the talk of insurgency, civil war and political violence unhelpful and counterproductive.

@Ramiah Ariya: The crisis was that a large majority of white people thought the social status they give themselves because of their skin color was under threat. To keep that, they’d gladly live under dictatorship, or even foreign occupation by another white country.

@debbie: It’s a quibble. Actually an important one to supporters of Ukraine, as the use of the article implies it is a territory and not a country, thus playing into Putin’s game. If your friend Charles asks you not to call him Chuckie, do you still do so?

@schrodingers_cat: Not bad ideas; some media outlets made a calculated bet that elevating Trump would get them more hate clicks than if HRC waltzed to victory, and as much as they’re now cloaking themselves as the virtuous light-shiners democracy needs, they’re getting a huge ROI of hate-clicks. At the same time, the best way to deal with a narcissist is to ignore them completely, and I think a lot of the snark aimed at Hell Toupee just ends up inadvertently supporting his and his voters’ own narrative (“Look! He drives liberals totally crazy!”); the rhetoric has been most valuable & effective when focused on how his actions hurt actual people. I still value BJ bc they do focus on this aspect a lot.

@debbie:
In Gin & Tonic’s defence, the difference is significant. The definite article before the name was, if I’m not mistaken, the preferred style when Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire; it hinted that Ukraine was a region in Russia, rather than the sovereign nation it is now.

Is it me or did Der fuhrer just confess on Twitter to giving aid and comfort to the enemy on twitter

U.S. President Donald Trump said in a tweet on Sunday that he discussed forming a cyber security unit to guard against election hacking with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Tweeting after his first meeting with Putin on Saturday, Trump said now was the time to work constructively with Moscow.
“Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded and safe,” he said following their talks at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany.
Trump said he had raised allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. “I strongly pressed President Putin twice about Russian meddling in our election. He vehemently denied it. I’ve already given my opinion…..”
He added: “We negotiated a ceasefire in parts of Syria which will save lives. Now it is time to move forward in working constructively with Russia!”

This entire framing of ‘I pressed’ is wrong.
The conversation should have been based on a couple of simple sentences:
1. T – we know what you did and it must stop
2. P – we deny
3. T – denial rejected. I will sign congressional legislation on sanctions.
4. T – and on returning those properties – never in my lifetime.

Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded and safe,” he said following their talks at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany.

I just copied this from Reuters but I see you’ve got it covered. How many looking glasses have we been through so far?

He and his administration are by no means “normal” and, in fact, I expect the long-term damage done by these carny hucksters to be much greater than I even imagine in my fevered dreams. I also expect the damage to last longer than I will, alas.

“Bothsiderism” and the whole-scale capitulation of the major media to a “profit first” model have neutered them or even worse.

My only solace is on the small-scale aspects of my current life. Looking at the big picture is overwhelmingly depressing.

Trump can get down to the more serious business of proving which liberals stole the strawberries.

Ix-nay on the Queeg comparisons. At least Capt. Queeg had served his country honorably, even if he did eventually go off the deep end. What has President* Lying Littledick ever done in service to the country?

I don’t think we have the luxury of playing ostrich and tuning out. This doesn’t mean we have to live in the state of distraction that Trump creates. Whether or not it’s meant to wear us down, it does. But we do need to be vigilant about what Trump does and how the media reports it. If he’s normalized, the Republicans will have a lock on government for some time to come (aided principally by election shenanigans that are also normalized). The consequences of this for people here and abroad are incalculable. It’s important to do what you need to do to maintain your well-being and to fight on.

My quibble is that is what was taken from what I posted. Let’s just overlook the plan Putin’s now put in place to co-opt this country. It seems pedantic, like bitching about an apostrophe. Oh wait, that does happen here. Silly me.

Sen. Schumer has already called Trump and Tillerson’s meeting with Putin a “grave dereliction of duty”; this is a good start, although the statement appears to have gotten very little attention. Democratic members of Congress, prominent ex-officials (Clinton, Obama), should not hesitate to call treason on the proposal to collaborate with Russia. I think the field is clear for this, since no Republican of similar stature is willing to defend Trump on camera now.

I think — hope — this will also generate serious backlash within the intel community and a new torrent of leaks. The fact that all of this is going on while Russia is trying to hack nuclear sites and power plants should generate a bi-partisan “holy crap” response.

EPIC’s attorneys argued, for their part, that the commission is violating the E-Government Act of 2002, which government agencies to conduct a privacy impact assessment before collecting personal information using information technology. No assessment was conducted before requesting voter data, the suit alleges. The DOJ lawyer responded that because the “election integrity” commission is not an official government agency, it does not have to abide by these rules.

EPIC also raised concerns that the site the commission has set up to receive sensitive voter information is hosted by the Pentagon, with a .mil web address.

After hearing both sides make their case on Friday afternoon,US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said she would issue a written opinion in the coming days.

Well then, if it is not an official government agency, it has no power to compel anyone to comply with it’s requests. Right?

So this showed up on a Facebook thread started by a Kentucky news pundit (he’d posted some bullshit WSJ profile on McConnell). I thought it brilliant.

The Seeds of a Southern Statesman

“Addison, wake up!” shouted Julia McConnell from the far end of a hallway outside the boy’s bedroom. “Breakfast will be ready in twenty minutes!”

Mitch McConnell sat up in bed and looked around the dark bedroom. The nine-year-old boy couldn’t see much without his glasses, but he could make out the morning sunlight that stabbed through the cotton print curtains beside a window and threw golden slats of light on wall posters of Talleyrand and Boss Tweed.

“Addison!” Julia shouted a second time. “I’m up, Mother,” responded Mitch, as he hoisted himself out of bed and shuffled into the bathroom. He climbed onto a stool, so he could look into the mirror above the bathroom sink, then washed his face and combed his hair before adjusting his owlish horn-rimmed glasses; but his mind was far away, nervously anticipating the election of a class president that he and his fellow fourth-graders would hold later that morning.

Mitch finished dressing and tied his Buster Browns before shuffling down the narrow hallway to the kitchen, where he sat at a wooden table and stared at a plateful of hominy grits and grapefruit. As he gulped down a glass of warm orange juice, his mother sat beside him and read aloud a passage from a morning devotional. “A reading from The Prince, by Machiavelli,” she intoned. “Chapter Nine, ‘Men judge more by the eye than by the hand, for everyone can see and few can feel. Everyone sees what you appear to be. Few really know what you are. Hence, a great man cannot be a good man.’”

Mitch usually drew inspiration from these table readings and listened to them with keen interest, especially when his mother read from Robert’s Rules of Order. But this morning his mind was already counting ballots, and he heard scarcely a word.

Julia noticed her son’s distraction and asked, “Have you fed your fish this morning?” “Not yet, Mother,” he replied before climbing down from his chair and walking across the linoleum floor to the refrigerator. He opened the door and pulled out a cellophane bag with two small goldfish. The fish swam in circles as Mitch carried the bag to his bedroom, where he unsealed the top and poured its contents into a nine-gallon tank that rested on the back edge of his desk and housed his two piranhas. The pair of predators stripped their prey with such rapidity that the water danced with bubbles as tiny bones floated to the surface. Mitch watched the carnage and wondered to himself if this was what Alabama politics was like.

Julia drove her son to school, where he made a beeline for the classroom and arrived in time to pass out campaign fliers to most of the other students as they straggled to their desks. For months he had schemed and labored to become class president, an ambition fueled by his many personal limitations. He was too short to join the baseball team, and his acute myopia prevented him from becoming a patrol boy. His grades were not high enough to impress the teacher, but he had managed to become a lunchroom monitor for two months in a row; and he extorted dimes and quarters from the children who misbehaved in the cafeteria, in exchange for a promise not to report them to the principal.

Mitch turned the modest revenue stream into a campaign fund, which he desperately needed in order to stand a chance of winning. He wasn’t as popular as his opponent, Sally Newman, a charming cheerleader with curly hair, a peach complexion and beguiling freckles, who had a line of boyfriends that stretched around the block. Mitch didn’t have the athletic prowess to win the jock vote, and he lacked the charisma to excite the masses; but for all his trouble with basic math, he had long since learned how to divide the children against each other.

He had nothing positive to offer the students, so he craftily tied his opponent to the unpopular president of the United States. “A Vote For Newman Is A Vote For Harry Truman” warned his campaign banners. Mitch also sidled up to Minnie Taylor, the class gossip, and began a whispering campaign against his opponent, alleging that her father was a socialist and her older sister Martha had been caught matriculating with thespians at Vassar.

One afternoon Mitch had feigned an ankle injury in order to stay in the classroom during recess, when he rifled through the teacher’s desk until he found Sally’s conduct reports for the past two years. When she was seven, she had been assigned two days’ detention after a teacher caught her trying to remove a copy of Teen Magazine from the school library. Mitch fed this juicy factoid to the other students in time to make a last-minute surge and win the election by two votes.

He grinned dutifully as the other children applauded and the teacher handed him the president’s gavel; but his mind was already far away, hatching a plot to have the flagpole in front of the school named after himself.

And thus began the long political career of a cunning child who aspired not to serve, but to be served.

@tobie: One doesn’t need to hear the bloviating blowhards to be well informed. I gather enough information from Balloon Juice and Twitter about the CW in DC. Call me an ostrich or whatever you like, nothing is going to make me want to hear the man or watch him speak. YMMV.

@OzarkHillbilly: One of the Reps, Brad Wenstrup, is mine (he took Mean Jean Schmidt’s place in this gerrymandered corner of Ohio). Asshole will do anything he can to take away health care from disabled American citizens but somehow Baby Charlie is different.

Those last tweets were shown to be false the first time he came up with them. Guess he’s repeating lies to distract from his collusion, and his traitorous staff and sons, and the gift condo sales and whatever crime news is coming tomorrow.

@schrodingers_cat: No offense to this blog community, but Balloon Juice and Twitter alone are probably not sufficient news sources. Print media is a great way to avoid hearing Trump’s voice or seeing his mug. My point was that the situation is urgent and requires concerted action in whatever form it takes (e.g., writing letters to the editor in local papers, going to voter suppressed areas to help people get necessary documents, calling the networks to let them know what’s wrong with their coverage, contacting the heads of various Senate committees, etc.). It stinks to high heaven to have to do this but–at least to me–it feels like our small-d democratic way of life is under attack.

According to MSNBC in the press avail on AF1 the Trump team used the words ‘substantive discussions’ to prove that Der Fuhrer is into the details of policy issues. Seems to me that all he has to do to prove that is have a press conference and talk about the details of policy issues.

I am having a more fundamental issue with Deadbeat Donald’s “DoWC” speech. The whole concept of “Western Civilization” is exclusionary, racist, colonial, and outmoded. Whether you [all of us] like it or not, this is one world that we share, and the idea that “the West” is some homogenous group of people who have the same culture and opinions is ridiculous.

BTW, DD should have just said “White Civilization” if he wanted to be perfectly clear about what he meant.

Same. Seeing his face or watching him speak makes me ill. I feel my stomach turn. I avoid it as much as possible, but sometimes his bloated ugly mug shows up on some show I want to watch. If that happens, I lunge for the remote to mute it and will actually put my hand up to hide most of the screen from my view until he’s gone from it. He’s just that repulsive.

At the end of Richard Engel’s msnbc report on Russia friday night, there was a segment on American evangelicals’ love of Putin and Russia. Clip of interview with lawyer G Kline Preston IV, Nashville, TN who counts billionaire banker Alexander Torshin as a close friend. Preston’s office is filled with books on Russia, Russian dolls, painting of George Washington by Russian artist and bust of Putin. Preston would love to meet Putin and he thinks Torshin is a wonderful guy and doesn’t believe Torshin is a mobster despite charges of money laundering. Preston says evangelicals bond with Russia on anti-same sex marriage and guns.

Doing some research on G Kline Preston IV, I read he has done business with Russia for years. He tells friends in TN to not believe media reporting suspicious deaths of journalists and other thorns in Putin’s side. Preston “monitored” an election in Russia and pronounced it completely legit. I didn’t find out which particular church he attends but learned that an evangelical church invited the Russian orthodox church to speak and Franklin Graham had meeting with Putin.

@Baud: The Spanish don’t call their home Spain, the Germans don’t call their home Germany, the Japanese don’t call their home Japan etc, etc, etc

In most cases, we accept that the English names of places are different than the native names for those places. In the particular case of Ukraine, since there is historical baggage attached to that “The” I try to remember not to use it, but the principle involved is “Don’t be a dick” not “We should call them what they call themselves.”

Well, fuck. I woke up early because it’s a hot as hell Southern California weekend, and am now thoroughly depressed.

But that’s okay, because Betty’,s post was just magnificent, and the link to the Australian tv news analysis was on the goddam money. It is a sad vindication to see how clearly the rest of the world understands Trump, and makes you want to holler at the putrid mediocrity of our Village pundits.

@Gin & Tonic: the United Stars will no doubt be surprised to hear that it’s not a country anymore, but I guess that’s what we get for not defending our borders, as tRump says . . .

But seriously, if Ukrainians prefer “Ukraine,” plain and simple, and maybe for the reason you note, maybe you should just say so? Your arguments for why “the” Ukraine is self-evidently wrong aren’t that good, and come across as needlessly insulting.

It wasn’t keeping me up nights but I did wonder why all of a sudden we dropped “The” from “The Ukraine.” Now that I know it’s a reflection of the country’s independence from the Soviet Union, it makes a lot of sense.

It still sounds weird to me to leave out the “The,” and I do backslide. But eventually I’ll get used to it.

My grandparents were from the part of Hungary that borders Ukraine, and as Jews, had very dim views of everything Ukrainian. And now I am correcting myself in support of Ukraine. It is nice when history matches in a positive direction.

@OzarkHillbilly: My neice’s husband, also Indian, made the same decision after the election (how far along he is in the process, I haven’t heard lately).

My first reaction was wondering why he wanted to do that. He said he wanted to join the fight, which I found very moving. Made me feel a little like a slug-a-bug — if I were in his position, would I feel as strongly? Would I make such a big life-change with such uncertainty?

@Ohio Mom: It was like getting married after a long live-in relationship. Sometimes that piece of paper that makes it official is important. There were people from 47 other countries at my oath ceremony, from Albania to Vietnam.

9) What is the first word that comes to mind when you think of Donald Trump? (Numbers are not percentages. Figures show the number of times each response was given. This table reports only words that were mentioned at least five times.)

That Chris Uhlmann piece I’d devastating for its accuracy. Trump and his fanatics and true believers won’t care though. Tone deaf, backwardsd looking, and scared people do not have the capacity for self reflection and changing course.

@Retr2327:
It is very simpleTHE Ukraine was a territory that belonged to the USSR. Ukraine is a nation, as it was before being swallowed and now is again – if the new USSR can be prevented from swallowing it again

I don’t doubt that. I’m certainly not against working toward peace in Ukraine. But do you not think that Trump is going to end sanctions, saying he’s doing so because Putin’s shown good faith? Do you not think that Putin will then return to doing what he was doing before?

I am so sick of listening to media types and experts tell me that Trump was naive or got played by Putin. Trump is playing for the Russian team. Once you acknowledge this, all his behaviors and communications make sense and are consistent.

@Schlemazel: no, I accept that Ukrainians prefer Ukraine, and that’s fine. I just thought the argument that Debbie was making an obvious mistake using the Ukraine because, e.g., it’s not “the” France was a bit much. Just say Ukrainians prefer Ukraine and explain why.

What’s terrible is for criticism of Trump in the media I turn to the Twitter feeds of John Podhoretz and Bill Kristol and the other never Trumpers at Weekly Standard, Commentary, National Review, etc, they link to. Sadly, better than reading Cilliza or watching CNN. Yes, I know they’d prefer we nuke Syria and start another Cold War but at least they recognize the insanity and stupidity of Trump and never try to rationalize.

He is all that. As far as I can tell, he has three expressions in his repertoire – the scowl, the smirk and the pout. Much like a particularly obnoxious eight year old, he is. I have reached the point where just seeing him in a photo or on television makes my stomach start knotting up.

Unfortunately, “I’m extremely well qualified for this job, and he clearly is not (let me count the ways),” was not good enough to put a qualified person in office last year. Because emails, or Bernie Sanders butthurt, or whatever other American complacency and/or stupidity for which we’re only beginning to pay the price now.

I’m looking at the picture of Trump sitting alone at the G20 table while other world leaders and their staffs circulate and talk to one another. Maybe no one wants to go near him, but his just sitting there also clearly shows he had no agenda. There was no one he wanted to talk to about some national interest. He was probably composing his next tweet in his head.

@OGLiberal: @Baud: I think that, like Kristol and Podherotz and others, Graham knows that Mike Pence would even easier to manipulate into signing tax cuts and launching land wars in Asia, without the distractions about Mika Brzezinski and calling their bills mean. Unlike Kristol et al, Graham has to worry about a Trumpist (Pee Party?) primary challenge.

In church this morning we were in a “guided meditation” (hate it!) where we were supposed to visualize standing in a stream and letting everything that was bothering us float downstream away from us. I had this horrific vision of standing there with Trump, Putin, Ivanka, and McConnell standing next to me and I was trying to make them float downstream but they just stood there.

None of these explanations deal with the fact that Russian and Ukrainian do not have articles — no a, an, or the. What this change in English parlance represents is the change (at least in Russian) from saying “na Ukraine” to “v Ukraine.” It’s roughly equivalent to the English situation with “the” vs. no article, where the “na” (like “the”) implies that Ukraina is just a region included in a larger nation, while “v” (like the absence of an article) makes it into its own country.

@Gelfling 545: Which isn’t the point at all. Neither Ukrainian nor Russian have a definite article, so this is meaningless in those languages. This has to do with how to say it in English, in which country names are almost never preceded by a definite article (The Republic of The Gambia aside.) English-speaking Ukrainians and friends of Ukraine find it an important distinction. As Lurking Canadian said, the principle at work here is simple.

Some of the problem with the press is that they are trying to convince themselves that somehow there will be normalcy soon. Trump isn’t normal, and at 71, will never be (in fact, due to aging, will start to deteriorate).

Sometimes I think the best guides to all of this is the stuff that Al-Alon, Ala-Teen and whatever else the 12 step movement has written. These people were dealing with Trump characters long before the Trumpster was out of grade school.

Congrats shroedinger’s cat for being one of us now. It must take a great deal of bravery to become a citizen now, under the Trump Administration.

@Gin & Tonic: You would call it The Borderlands if it were in English.

Since Ukrainians say they want it to be called Ukraine, I’m fine with that. It costs nothing to give people the respect of addressing them the way they wish (usually), so there’s no reason not to be nice about it. On the other hand, English speaking people who refer to The Ukraine generally aren’t being malicious, or even stupid since it was the consensus name for centuries. Assume they’re ignorant and help them learn something new.

My hope is we will be saved when Mueller drops the $ figure the Donald & Co are in hock to the Russian mob for having floated the company for the last 20 years. Donald’s base won’t care but I hope a Federal Judge won’t approach it from the same angle. So yea, the independent judiciary is my only hope. God knows Sessions will try to take a fall with any prosecution so that is going to have to be watched. I figure the info comes out next spring. Let’s see how much the MSM tries to sweep it under the rug. We know some/many of them will. And ‘principled Republicans’ joining us when confronted with the effluent? Yea, that’s not gonna happen. There haven’t been any since Nixon. Reagan started the end, Newt finished it.

I’m not one for much political violence so far. I would miss your calm presence if you left,, and want to encourage you to stick around. I’m actually getting much of my news here… the important stuff seems to get covered.

I agree. And I don’t think most Trump voters have the slightest interest in what people who regularly comment on BJ think or have to say.

Many years ago, I was taking a ferry from Haines, AK to Prince Rupert, BC. During the trip, I met an older man with a shock of white hair — he looked like a walking stereotype of the judge or politian. Superficially, he looked distinguished, but the exterior hid a radical RWNJ, with, what was to me, the narrowest of minds. At one point during our discussion — we were talking about development versus preservation and environmentalism in general — the man, an Alaska state senator it turned out — told me, without a hint of insincerity or irony, that I should enjoy hiking through a clear cut on a logging road as much as I enjoy walking on a single track trail through pristine wilderness. By the time we’d exhausted each other with our virtually universal disagreement, I had come to understand that we would never agree. There simply was no common ground and we were never going to have any meaningful communication. It was frustrating, but instructive. The pipeline had been finished two years earlier, Alaska was overrun with greedheads, and that state senator was a lot more extreme than the politicians I was used to dealing with in the lower 48. However, today, he would be a run-of-the-mill Republican and an avid Trump supporter.

The photos I find alarming are the recent group photos from G20. Everyone else in the picture is smiling for the camera and he stares vacantly, as if he has momentarily forgotten where he is and what he is doing.

ETA: Since only some of the sanctions are related to the Ukrainian situation, removal of any relating to the election interference should not even be involved. And he makes it sound like he told Putin that nothing will be done about the sanctions until the Ukrainian and Syrian situations are resolved. In which case sanctions were discussed.

@OzarkHillbilly: Just goes to show that you don’t have to be a Communist, Lefty Pinko Hippie to see right through Trump and his ineptitude. Even Rightwingers can see what and who he is. It’s the honest ones like Uhlmann who speak openly about this.

How much does anyone want to bet that Trump’s “pressing [of] President Putin twice about Russian meddling in our election” amounted to:
1). “Vlad, a lot of losers in the US think you guys helped me win my amazing, historic election. That’s total bullshit, right?”
2). “Vlad, you know I won a historic, masterful election last year that everyone’s talking about. Those Democrats whining about losing an election, that they should have won, I might add, saying that Russia hacked them and helped my campaign are just fake news, am I right?”

I’ve done a lot of sea kayaking off the coast of British Columbia. There’s a stretch of coast north of Fair Harbour on Vancouver Island on the way to the Bunsby Islands and the Brooks Peninsula that has been stripped of every tree from the top of the mountain ridge all the way down to the sea. It’s miles long and the resulting erosion is an ecological nightmare. The logging practices in British Columbia are horrific. It feels like one is looking at a kind of war zone.

There is a campground on Vancouver Island I stopped at once on my way north that features a nature trail through some old growth (Douglass firs). The trees are magnificent, without challenging any size records. Right next to the trees is a lake. While at the CG, I took my kayak out on the lake for a look around. Once on the water, I could see the trees and where the trail was. The trail had been carefully constructed to hide the fact that there were only a small number of trees left from a clear cut. Once on the trail, the hiker is surrounded by vegetation and trees that make it seem like s/he’s in an old growth forest. But it’s really just a relatively few “show” trees left to create an illusion. The reality is devastation.

@Schlemazel: You could say the same thing about the Belarus, the Georgia, the Armenia, etc. And yet, we didn’t call them that. Which might suggestion a problem with the whole “the” implies domination theory.

But again, as stated, if Ukrainians now prefer Ukraine, that’s good enough. I just don’t buy the arguments that putting “the” in front of a country’s name necessarily and in all instances a) is wrong, grammatically, or b) implies subjugation, etc.

As comforting as it is to think . . . that most Americans don’t share their racist views

I cannot imagine anyone being comforted after Trump’s election. What we learned is that even if they do not loudly express their racist views, the great majority of white Americans are sympathetic with those views and, at a minimum, do not consider a candidate’s openly stated racist views to be a reason not to vote for him. We also learned that the press/media will minimize racism and provide euphemisms for racists to use when being openly racist won’t do. See, e.g., economic anxiety, conservative, family values, evangelical Christian, etc.

The only people I can imagine being comforted after Trump’s election are white racists & religious bigots who believe that they got their country back and the rich, who realized that the great mass of voters are still stupid & racist enough to be manipulated by a transparent fraud.

@TriassicSands:
When we did our addition nearly all the lumber/wood products came from Canada, even though we’re in California. They’re basically the 51st state when it comes to raw material resources.

So the question that stuck me yesterday was, “how did the Nazis *get* competent?” And it seems it was bc they able to get competent people in their government, bc there were surely some people there who didn’t really buy into the Dolchstosslegende/ Mein Kampf bs, but were competent and just really really loved power, no matter who held it. And when the bad guys finally repeated the Big Lie enough, and got enough power, the competent people saw which way the wind was blowing, shrugged, and flipped.

Tell me, are you aware of this thing called the German Empire that lasted up until 16 years before Hilter’s election. Were does this German tradition of Jeffersonian democracy that produced these technocrats you refer to come from?

@debbie: And who would take American negotiators seriously under these circumstances? Having credibility matters. The Trump “plan” is to let Russia “fix” these “problems”, declare victory, and then give stuff to Putin. He has no policy or priorities in Ukraine or Syria beyond “winning”, which can be defined any way that works. And even if certain people on the American team are credible and knowledgeable, they’re not the ones in charge and they’re not the ones who can make sure that the US enforces any agreements.

It’s all kabuki. The priority is “better relations with Russia” which translates to doing whatever Putin wants.

I suppose I feel a tiny bit sorry for the media. Maybe during the campaign, they should have run stories about how an empty-headed blowhard was being treated as a credible candidate for President, and not tried for “balance”. They didn’t and now they have this situation.

And now, they have to choose between basically fomenting panic, and savaging the elected US President daily, or, pretending this is a normal presidency. They know *how* to do the latter… so they do.

I’m not saying that this *excuses* them. But I do feel a bit of understanding of how much it hurts, especially if they realize that this is a sort of Nazi-lite administration, and are trying to figure out “okay, we done screwed the proverbial pooch, now, just as a person who’s done that literally and non-proverbially, we have an embarrassing situation that brings up difficulties *no one* is trained or aware of how to deal with, but we can’t just walk away, either!”

@tobie: This. We can note what’s going on and point and laugh, or shake our heads and sigh, or apply black humor. But we can’t be distracted from the existing policies and norms that are being destroyed, the know-nothings that are trying to give away the store and loot the Treasury, and the horrible world that they’re trying to create through action and inaction.

@sdhays: I have no problem with having better relations with Russia. However,a lot depends on what Russia is required to do. Syria is a minor issue as far as Russia is concerned. It would cost them very little to resolve the situation there. Ukraine is another matter. I can very easily see a situation where Putin says we will have the “Russia friendly” forces cease any further attempts to gain territory and just have territory they already have and Crimea be part of Russia. Trump would hail that as a victory, as violence has been stopped. In many ways it would be worse than Munich. In return we would give Putin 50 – 75% of what he wants in terms of lifting sanctions, which again would be a victory for Putin.

Putin, like Trump, believes in a zero-sum game. All he has to do is make Trump believe that Trump is the winner and he is the loser. That isn’t hard. Trump is a kindergartner playing with the big boys when it comes to Putin.

@Neldob: Riots focus attention on the violence and obscure what people are upset about. Nonviolent protests demonstrate that a bunch of people care a lot about a set of issues, and that’s the story. The average person reading about the G20 will know that there were riots, or if they know a bit more, they’ll know that people were protesting “globalization” (which, to me, is such an overly broad term that it’s essentially meaningless in this context) but they’re violent criminals, so who cares what they think? In my opinion, that’s a complete and total failure and not to be emulated.

@tybee: I agree with G&T. Sticking “the” in front of country names, countries that had a history of being oppressed by colonialism or imperial neighbors, is something that shouldn’t be done any more. It is still done by British news types too often, also too – “the Sudan, the Congo”.

Using American English, we don’t talk about “the Kansas” or “the Japan” or similar singular nouns.

It grates on the ears of people with tied to those countries. There’s bad history behind it. It’s not that hard not to drop the article.

@japa21: I totally agree. I’m not against having better relations with Russia, but the frame that Trump and Putin come at this from is that it’s all the US’ fault that relations are poor. Putin doesn’t want improved relations – he wants the US to do his bidding. And Trump doesn’t give even one shit about US relations with anyone; he’s getting paid, or at least thinks he is.

I’ll just add that Trump isn’t getting played unless he’s been promised that Gazprom money and isn’t actually going to get it (and I don’t think they’re going to double-cross him for what’s chump change to them). He doesn’t comprehend American interests outside of “what’s good for Trump”, so he doesn’t really care about or even understand damage done to US policy, citizens, institutions, etc. He’s not getting tricked into selling us out, he’s just selling us out cheap.

@TriassicSands: I’ve read that the “spirit bears” (rare light-colored brown bears) of B.C. are alive today only because the native people of the area kept their very existence a secret from white hunters. That has the ring of truth; whether it is I don’t know.

@tybee: The USA is a collective noun, so to speak. (I am not a grammarian, so there is probably a correct term for this.) Like the UK, the Netherlands. It used to be “the Cameroons,” when there was French and British Cameroon; but no one calls Cameroon that nowadays, since it is an independent country.

The “the” in front of Ukraine is a vestige of Russian imperialism (whether under the tsars or the commissars), and is of a kind with the Ems Ukase and Soviet Russification. It was all an effort to deny the existence of Ukraine as a separate nation and people, and to absorb them in the Russian Borg.

None of that should even matter, though. When China decided it’s capital should be correctly known as Beijing, did people continue to call it Peking?

@OzarkHillbilly: After discussing “rhinoceroses, how best stowed,” no doubt. Always happy to encounter another Patrick O’Brian fan (although I’ll never forgive him for a certain totally unexpected death that occurs late in the series). And one of the finest illustrations of leadership, in a myriad of challenging situations, was Russell Crowe’s portrayal of Jack Aubrey in Master and Commander.

@Iowa Old Lady: I notice that about all the photos–Trump is alone or on one side of a group, and people are talking to each other and not to him. Whereas Obama was usually in the middle of a group, and everyone near him was laughing. He is engaging, and people like him, including other world leaders. I’ve never seen any image remotely like that with the EC Prez at world leader events.

@Ramiah Ariya:
I think it’s good to remember that the US is not a democracy. We are a representative republic. It’s been called a democracy by us and so many others that people don’t see the difference any longer. It was set up so that the regular people don’t really have the power we nominally attribute to them. The political parties have the power and that can be manipulated, as it has been for the last almost 40 yrs, to arrive at the point we are at now, a complete mess, to say the least.
I think there are some fixes without starting over completely but I get a lot of pushback from most when I talk about them, that they don’t reflect the will of the people. Seeing as how the loser in the last election got around 5% more people to vote for her I’m looking at our current system as the one that doesn’t reflect the will of the people but more of the will of property.

@stinger: As has been pointed out a number of times, here and elsewhere, Trump has never had any real friends — only people with whom he does business, for better or worse — and he is awkward and insecure as a result. Having a terrible personality will also do that to a person.

@TriassicSands: Years ago I had an on-line friend who was from BC. He said many of the rivers there had been destroyed decades before by the pulp and paper mills. Even areas with great natural beauty can be damaged in hidden ways. (Another example is areas around Athabasca…)

Cheers,
Scott.
(“Who hopes the BC fires are brought under control soon…”)

Syria is a minor issue as far as Russia is concerned. It would cost them very little to resolve the situation there.

Syria is a quagmire and Putin was “forced” to intervene there. He wasn’t willing (or able) to give up Russia’s Mediterranean base(s) there, so he had to go big when Assad was on the verge of collapse. Syria is a bleeding wound that shows the weakness of Putin’s position there. He can’t leave, he can’t impose a solution, he can’t “win”, and he’s tied to Assad (at least to some extent – he’s mainly tied to whoever is controlling the government there). His best hope is probably to claim a “win” in a rump state with Damascus and his precious bases, but seeing Syria divided up between factions supporting Iraq and Iran and the Kurds and Turkey and all the rest won’t help his strategic interest in saying he’s a stronger counterparty to the USA and the West. It makes him look weak (and he actually is weak).

He undoubtedly thinks that Syria is a trump card (heh) in his dealings with Turkey and the EU (“You better do what I want or who knows how many millions more will flee Syria and try to get into Eurorpe!”) but for that threat to be credible he has to invest a lot more in Syria – money and military matériel that he really can’t spare. He’s stuck.

@zhena gogolia:
I’ve been through that thought exercise and when people like you mentioned are included, all I can think about is at least one of them is pissing in the stream, just to see if anyone notices so they can say “I pissed on you.” Because that seems to be their only rational for breathing, to piss on everyone else.

@Another Scott: Good point. Syria’s so screwed up by now that no one can “fix” it. Certain parties can be constructive, but it’s a raging, disastrous clusterfuck. Removing Assad won’t fix things, although it might open up a constructive path to peace, but I don’t believe Putin is willing to sacrifice Assad for alleviation of sanctions. He could have gotten that deal from Obama.

@Another Scott: in the early 2000s, I spent some years working with a phd in applied mathematics from the university of Donetsk and he, in conversations carried on in English, called the country he was from “the Ukraine”.
he immigrated about 5 years after the fall of the soviet union. He had to wait that long because he worked on government projects that had to do, ultimately, with guidance systems for ICBMs. interesting fellow.
still exchange emails a few times a year with him.
i will also say that, as to “the” Ukraine part, since his native language had no articles, he generally put an article of some sort in front of every noun. some were hilarious.

It’s not momentary. If you need to go back as far as you want. He’s never momentarily forgotten how to smile or even just act bored. That vacant look of stupidity is the way his face normally sits. Because that’s who he normally is. If he is smiling you should check to make sure your wallet is still intact, even if you were watching TV at the time and there is no possible physical connection. Is he deteriorating? I think he is. But it’s not deteriorating from normal human, it’s deteriorating from his normality, and that is as a fucking asshole.

@tybee: You know your friend better than I do, of course, but I will note that Donetsk is one of those areas that was consciously “messed with” via industrial and political decisions in Moscow to move in lots of non-Ukrainians. Donetsk demographics.

It’s complicated.

(I’ve mentioned before:) My graduate advisor’s family was from Ukraine. They were refugees after WWII and he was born in Germany. They emigrated to Australia and he ended up in Ohio after his graduate education. He had a strong Australian accent, but he and his wife (who was also Ukrainian via Australia) and kids spoke Ukrainian at home and on the phone. They’re a very proud people who aren’t going to give up their country.

Yes it does. I should have added this part because it’s also important that we recognize it. And in case anyone is wondering this maladministration would probably offend a number of the founding fathers, but not all of them. This is who they are, it’s who they’ve always been, it’s just taken this long to find the perfect candidate that can be manipulated so easily by cash. And bullshit. And really not that much of either.

@sdhays: I agree, but when the French rebelled against their ancien regime in 1789, I’m sure much of the upper class saw the rioters and rebels as violent criminals. None of that mattered when the revolutionaries became the government. Of course that led to more horrors, but the ideals that it spawned were very important. A major reason it went awiry was because France had no established democratic tradition or institutions.

We should always say/write “Ukraine” to be respectful, in the same way that we should always write/say “Romania” rather than “Rumania” to refer to the nation with București (“Bucharest”) as its capital. And for much of the same reason – the old forms bring to mind former occupiers (Russians & Turks).

—–

That being said, there is a plausible argument that “the Ukraine” is a reflection of French usage[1] (l’Ukraine), in which the name of every nation has a definite article.

The issue doesn’t even apply in Slavic languages, including Russian & Ukrainian, which generally[2] do not even have articles; one has to go through some conniptions to express “a” or “the”, which are usually inferred from the context[3] & thus are often left out by native Slavic speakers when speaking/writing English.[4]

So it may be that the only European language in which there is even the possibility of offending Ukrainians by adding the definite article to “Ukraine” is English.[5] Dang.

NB: In 2010 I spent 8 days in Ukraine. The first 4, in Lviv, smiles all around whenever I tried a few words of Ukrainian (via memory or phrasebook).[6] Then in Kyiv, even things as basic as будь ласка (bud’ laska, “please”) or дякую (dyakuyu, “thank you”) drew blank stares. Can’t imagine my pronunciation deteriorated that badly on the overnight train… Very few people spoke (or cared to speak) anything but Russian. (And me with no Russian phrasebook. Or access to Gogol, um, Google Translate. Bozhemoi!)

That I made it back to my friends in Prague mostly in one piece is a testament to the genial English speakers who helped the American graybeard arrange & buy his rail tickets.

—notes—

[1] This may also be true in other Romance languages, but French, as a diplomatic language, is the most significant instance.
[2] IIRC Bulgarian is an exception – definite article suffixed to the noun.
[3] E.g., in Czech, “a” = “an indefinite one of a number of like items” => a form of jeden, “one”; “the” = “a unique item or specific one of a number of related items” => a form of ten/ta/to, “this/that”. Not very commonly though.
[4] Thus Boris Badenov refers to Bullwinkle & Rocky as “Moose and Squirrel” (Лося и белка) – & we all know from context just which of the species he means.
[5] Not familiar enough with Greek, German, or the various Scandinavian or Finno-Ugric (Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian) tongues to say.
[6] Which has been my experience throughout Europe. Except for Hungary. Long story.

@🌎 🇺🇸 Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) 🗳 🌷: True, but that’s a bit different to me. Violence can be effective, but usually only when the violence is directed and with purpose (it’s a Pandora’s box which I don’t endorse, though). Riots to get attention, which is how I interpret the Hamburg riots, will always simply discredit the protest it’s associated with. Unless, of course, that was the point…

KIEV, Ukraine — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Sunday that Russia must make the first moves to rein in separatists and remove its weaponry from eastern Ukraine. He also vowed that sanctions would remain in place until Moscow reverses its actions and respects the border between the two countries.

Well, I guess that settles that! Trump is yet again going to shit all over what his SoS just said. Stand by for “corrective” tweets in 3 …2 … 1 ….

@Elie: The Administration reflects its leader. If the leader is sick, so are the surrounding staff. But the difference is that once Trump leaves one way or another, the surrounding staff and party can at least fake normal and some have time enough to change (even).

To me, this Administration is less “Triumph of the Will” than Benny Hill. Nobody really has any ideas that have been tried and not already failed-or people who have tried and failed and can’t ever really win.

See my comment above. You can be offensive in Russian (and I assume in Ukrainian, although I don’t speak it) by using “na” instead of “v” as “in” for “in Ukraine.” “na” is the old style, “v” is the new, analogous to leaving out the “the.” I think maybe the English usage trailed after this innovation in Slavic languages.

When you say “I’m in X country,” “in” is “v.” If you say you’re on an island or in a region like the Caucasus, “in” is “na.” It used to be you said “na Ukraine,” as if it were just a region; now the correct usage is “v Ukraine,” as it’s a country.

British Columbia is extraordinarily beautiful. The mountains, forests, and coastal areas are stunning. But there has been far too much environmental damage done by extractive industries. I’m often saddened by the thought that the US has used BC as something of a resource colony and Canada has cooperated.

Arrgh. I’m typing on a laptop with a touchscreen and mouse (I dislike touchpads). The cursor jumps around uncontrollably without warning and copies and pastes text wherever it decides to. That’s why the previous comment looks like it is all a reply. I was then denied permission to edit my own comment — so it stands. Annoying.

@TriassicSands: Happens to me all the time on laptops w/ either touchpad or mouse & it drives me nuts. You’d think someone would have invented software to fix that & they probably have. (Anybody know of anything?)

But as a stopgap, try this when commenting here: Click in the “Leave a Comment” window & immediately move the cursor outside of the window (don’t click on it, just reposition the arrow or whatever so that it sits on the screen somewhere outside the window). Then start typing. If what you type stops appearing in the comment box, bring the cursor back in, click at the end of the text, then again immediately move the cursor outside of the window. That at least should prevent the jumping-around & the inadvertent highlighting of text (which is then deleted with the next character you type). It’s a PITA to remember to do it, but it’s better than seeing your comments mangled.

Thanks. I’ve tried that with limited success. I’ve also tried positioning the cursor inside the comment box and then turning the mouse OFF. Then, I use the touchscreen if I need to put the cursor back inside the comment box. So far, I haven’t found anything that works perfectly.

I think what happened with the comment I referred to is that I had left the mouse ON and when I used the touchscreen to scroll down to hit the “Comment” button, the comment box moved off the screen to the top and I didn’t see the copying and pasting happen. I just hit “Comment” and saw the mess. But to add insult to injury I wasn’t allowed to edit my own comment. What’s up with that? Do you have any idea why the commenter is denied editing privileges? That was the second time it’s happened to me.

@zhena gogolia: It’s really hard to learn the finer points of prepositions (or postpositions, as in Hungarian) in any language. I’ve studied some Czech, & according to James Naughton’s Czech: An Essential Grammar, a somewhat similar distinction is made therein between na and v when used with the locative case to mean “in” as in “inside of”:

Various places which are not considered as enclosed spaces use na, whereas those which are treated as buildings or enclosed spaces use v.

I suppose using na when referring to a region might imply that it’s part of a larger entity, whereas v might imply it stands on its own.

Then again, Naughton concludes, It is ultimately just a matter of usage. (You couldn’t tell by me – I’m still trying to wrap my head around verb aspect!)

Do you have any idea why the commenter is denied editing privileges? That was the second time it’s happened to me.

Had it happen a couple of times; also have “clicked to edit” & gotten the message “comment successfully loaded” when the editing window stayed completely blank. No rhyme or reason I can find as to why &/or when.

One of the few things I took away from years working in electronic equipment reliability is that nothing will turn a reliability engineer into a gibbering mass of ectoplasm faster than an intermittent failure, or a CND (“could not duplicate”), or a RTOK (“retest OK”). Except, possibly, a speech by Hillary Rodham Clinton. (Most of my colleagues were politically 6 megaparsecs to starboard of Genghis Khan.)

How to proceed? Report any instances to Alain, provide him any information that could conceivably be related, pray to St. Jude (patron saint of lost causes) for intercession. And don’t hold your breath.

(ETA: I did in my time there witness at least one instance of a recurrent intermittent fault that turned out, after some very clever analysis, to be completely explicable & easily resolved. Not many more than one, though.)